Range

I'm not sure what you mean by "there seems to be little interest from people in buying these"... Based on the price movements and the volume of financial stocks since the election, it is clear that people are very interested in buying these. I would agree with your statement if you had written it 2 weeks ago.

That's not entirely accurate. Scotia and TD are big players in the space. They call it non-prime loans but it's definitely what anyone on this forum would call subprime. Interest rates of 19% to 29% are not unheard of. Here's an article about a couple who signed a 25% loan from TD and called a newspaper to complain: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/couple-feel-robbed-by-25-interest-td-car-loan-1.2483342 Here's a link to Scotia's Special Finance Program: http://www.scotiabank.com/ca/en/0,,4625,00.html I've studied the space a little bit and from what I remember, both banks don't segregate subprime from prime auto loans in their financials so it's hard to figure out the exact exposure but they both definitely have sizeable subprime auto loan books. I would guess that both banks have over a billion dollars each of receivables of subprime auto loans.

How did you come up with those figures?

It says right in the first link that they can liquidate the positions for you and you have no control over what they sell. You are also required to post more collateral if the value of the assets go down in value Read the section titled "Understanding risks associated with your LMA account"

Pretty sure that was a joke about Buffett reading his analysis. I don't get how he's a clown for wondering why Buffett doesn't own MCD. So basically you chastise Buffett for investing in XOM as well, with the line "how can he call himself a value investor"? +1 Plus, XOM is down about 5% (when you account for dividends) since bmichaud made his comment while oil prices have dropped about 55%. Such a terrible pick!!!

Thanks for that last post Richard. I didn't feel like taking the time to address those points but I'm glad someone did.

Widsom, I'll just add that house prices have done inflation or inflation+1% over time depending on the research/studies that you read. So let's call that 4% just for fun. That means that a house will take 17-18 years to double in value. Does that mean that the average homeowner over the past century has made a poor decision if it took on average 17 years for his house to double in value? (I'm also bearish on Canadian housing, I just don't understand what you're trying to prove)

Sincerely not trying to be a jerk... but why would it be different if you have kids or not? A simple lease vs. buy analysis or implied cap rate on purchase price is what I would look at. I don't see how kids fit into either of those equations. (I don't have kids so I could be completely naive here)

"Invest at the point of maximum pessimism." - Sir John Templeton While that is a good quote, I hardly think it applies here. Shares of HCG were up almost 20% in 2014.

IB The only issue is if you're in Canada, they can't handle registered accounts (RRSP, LIRA, TFSA, etc). As to the complexity of the platform argument: The learning curve is little steeper than a regular browser platform but you always have the option of using WebTrader to input your trades.

Those are actually very IN right now. Go to any hipster spot and you'll see people wearing them. Urban Outfitters wouldn't sell them if they weren't cool right ? http://www.urbanoutfitters.com/urban/catalog/productdetail.jsp?id=31612567&parentid=M_ACC_WATCHES#/ In all seriousness, I wonder if Prem will flaunt that thing around at the Fairfax AGM next year.

Thanks for the article Fareastwarriors. Peter Thiel's Stanford startup class notes: http://blakemasters.com/peter-thiels-cs183-startup I'm sure these have popped up on the boards before but I figure someone might have missed them. Worth a read IMO (even if I'm not even close to being a tech guy)